The first time I heard a friend use
the term ‘virgin’ whilst referring to a cooking medium, I didn’t know what had
or hadn’t been done to the liquid for it to have earned that status. Then came
‘extra virgin’ to further confuse my generally-muddled brain.
I asked Shri
Husband what it meant and received a “don’t be silly” in return. The term
(‘extra virgin’, not ‘don’t be silly’) was parked in a corner of my memory
until one day Bai Goanna said virgin olive oil was good for the health.
Me: “Oh?”
She said
she’d read about it in a magazine or twenty. For the last many years, she’s
been concerned about her well-being. She drinks warm water with lemon and honey
in the morning, followed by oats/cornflakes with fruit-platter, eats garlic all
the time, bananas with tea, dry-roasted puffed-rice if she feels snacky, just
two rotis or a measured amount of rice with lentil and vegetable soup, a single
portion of steamed chicken/fish as a treat twice a week. Only multiple-grain
breads, thank you. Slimy green drinks are her favourites, and extractions of
yeast and other smelly fungi keep her immune system strong. She runs pre-dawn full-marathons
for fun, and solves maths puzzles to keep the grey-cells agile. So when she
pronounced ‘good for the health’ I knew she knew what she was talking about.
“Virgin
oil,” she gravely said, “is the first extraction from crushed olives.
Cold-pressed, strained.”
She said she
drizzled it on salads and rubbed it on elbows and heels to prevent chaffing. She asked which oil I used.
“Whatever is
available at the vanni’s,” I confessed.
“Always check
the label for the nutrition,” she said.
I check it only
for the price; but didn’t admit it right then. Mine’s a sambar-guzzling,
xeet-kodhi family. We eat what we pluck from our compound (not garden,
definitely not garden) during the monsoons. Wild stuff that our locals say we
must eat: ‘alloo’ leaves, for example, and drumstick flowers. (BTW, these
drumsticks aren’t chicken legs nor musical-instrument attendants; they’re ‘muska-sango’).
But they’re so-o not fashionable. I don’t find those ingredients in any cookery
classes/programs.
In fact,
none of the things we eat at home are ever seen on television: phow with
grated coconut and jaggery, bhakryo made with nachnnya
pittho, and eaten with tisryaa-ek-shippi. Ever since
someone told me shell-fish is good for cholesterol and cholesterol is bad for
us, I’ve stopped eating it. No, actually, I’ve stopped telling people that we
eat it. When I do (tell people, I mean, not the eating part), I’m armed with
references and links that say actually-actually shell-fish are good when cooked
in the traditional way, with organic ingredients. Somehow when the words
traditional and organic are thrown in, everyone’s convinced about the goodness
of the dish.
I
hesitatingly admitted to Bai Goanna: “I bought coconut-oil the other day.
Cold-pressed, unrefined.” Hesitatingly because the last time I said such a
thing, my audience of two burst out laughing thinking it was a joke. “Hair oil
in food? Haha-hoho,” they chortled. “It’s good for a massage, though.” (At the
time, I was reminded of an aunt who, when told that people in north and east
India used mustard oil as a medium for cooking said, “That’s why their
intellect is dense and their speech not sweet”. Had she been alive today, she’d
have been labelled an ignorant, generalizing racist.)
To my
surprise, Bai Goanna told me: “That’s good. It’s one of the best oils going
around.” Really? I was puzzled. I mean until the other day it was only
extra-virgin olive oil. What changed?
“New
research,” she clarified. “You must avoid palm-oil. Some extracts are fine, of
sunflower-seed, safflower-seed, sesame-seeds…”
I got into
the groove and sang along: “Cornseed, rapeseed, canola, jatropa, rice-bran, jojoba,
grape-seed, kapop, soya-bean, castor-oil,
biodiesel…”
“That’s
enough.” Two words from Shri Husband and the larynx goes chup.
Bai Goanna
isn’t intimidated by Shri Husband. She carried on with her gyaan: “Crude vegetable
oil is the
unrefined, unprocessed oil produced from vegetables - in the natural vegetable
oil state when it is first extracted. It undergoes further processing and
to take it from its crude form to a refined state.
Crude to refined makes it useable and safe for human consumption.” She
threw in words like non-glyceride, trace metals, oxidation and contaminants.
Fascinating tongue-twisters.
The same evening we met a nice young man who
said he worked in the oil industry. He said he specialized in ‘crude-oil’.
“Virgin?” asked Bai Goanna, still enthused by
our oil-talk.
Shri Husband interrupted: “Crude. Crude oil.
Petroleum.”
The young man helpfully added: “I work in a
refinery. It makes naphtha, gasoline, kerosene, the liquid petroleum gas you
use in your kitchen. High-tech.”
“Extra virgin then?” Bai Goanna clarified.
“Crude,” both screamed at her.
I’ve no idea why, but an inexplicable
awkwardness seemed to stall that conversation and Shri Husband is still angry
with my best friend.
Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in
